Join the Center for Justice at Columbia University and our university and community partners from across New York City for a performance of Bryonn Bain’s Lyrics from Lockdown. This powerful one man show exposing racial profiling and wrongful incarceration will be followed by a discussion inspired by Harry Belafonte about arts and activism in the era of mass incarceration with Bryonn Bain, Academy Award Nominee, School of the Arts Professor Jamal Joseph, and Asha Rosa, CC ’15 and Organizer with Students Against Mass Incarceration and the Black Youth Project 100. The discussion will be moderated by Soffiyah Elijah, Executive Director of the Correctional Association of New York.

About Lyrics from Lockdown

This unbelievably true story begins when Brooklyn’s own hip hop theater innovator and spoken word champion, Bryonn Bain (60 Minutes, The Village Voice, BET’s My Two Cents), is wrongly imprisoned in NYC jails — while studying law at Harvard. Weaving together the voices of over 40 characters into a one-man tour de force, Lyrics From Lockdown, executive produced by Gina and Harry Belafonte, is receiving extraordinary reviews around the world. A groundbreaking multimedia production, this critically acclaimed show uses a live band and video DJ, fusing hip hop, theater, spoken word poetry, rhythm and blues, calypso and classical music, to tell a provocative story exposing racial profiling and wrongful incarceration in a nation imprisoning more people than any other in the world.

Lyrics from Lockdown at Miller Theatre is presented by the Center for Justice at Columbia University in collaboration with the Division of Social Science – Faculty of Arts and Sciences – Columbia University the Institute for Research in African American Studies, Sankofa.org, Center for NuLeadership, the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Columbia College | Columbia Engineering, CAA Arts Access, Institute for Urban and Minority Education, Human Rights Project at the Urban Justice Center, JustLeadershipUSA, Education from the Inside Out Coalition, The Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, The Mailman Incarceration and Public Health Initiative, The Institute for the Study of Human Rights, Teachers College – Vice President’s Office for Diversity and Community Affairs, NYU Prison Education Program, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Responsible Endowments Coalition, Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project, Columbia University Students Against Mass Incarceration, CSSW Criminal Justice Caucus, the Association for Justice and Health, the Human Rights Working Group and CU Students for Human Rights

Group tickets are available at a discounted rate through Miller Theatre. There are a limited number of sponsored tickets available for available for organized trips for young people and those directly impacted by mass incarceration. Please email [email protected] for more information.

Tickets for this event have sold out. Should any seats become available, they will be available for purchase through the Miller Theatre Box Office the day of the show until 4pm.